2015 Paragliding World Cup - Baixo Guandu, Brazil: Task 1 report

Michael Sigel reports on the action in Brazil:

"Already on the way to the takeoff the sky was looking very nice with small cumulus clouds everywhere. The task committee decided to go for an easy 70km task between the hills and the flatlands around the Rio Doce. The start was an 1km exit around P03, then we had to cross the river in the north, followed by G10 in the north west. The third turnpoint was the antennas next to Baixo Guandu, only 2km in front of the goal, which was the airfield.

For the first time since a long time, pilots were behaving themselves before the airstart—almost no aggressive flying or cloud flying. The start was at 13:00 and everyone left cloudbase in time for the first turnpoint on the other side of the river. Already after the first few thermals it became clear that the thermals were strong, but also cyclic. Frankie Brown and I were pushing a lot in front of the others, always looking for strong thermals. As soon as a climb got weak, we left the thermals. Because of that, we took a nice lead in front of the others. But after the second turnpoint in the north-west, we were struggling to find good lifts and the others could catch up to us. An other group even decided to take the second turnpoint on the left side of the river, which was the slightly faster line. 10km before goal, the two groups met again. Because the sinking between the thermals was big, I decided to follow the clouds on my way to the goal. This way was working out quite well, but the other pilots on the straight line found some thermals too. It was a neck-and-neck race to the last turnpoint. Youngster Nicola Donnini crossed the line first in less than two hours, closely followed by me and Frankie Brown.